Former 2:24 marathoner, now in my late 40s and hoping to maximally flatten the curve of my slide into senescence and mediocrity • Magazine writer, book editor and author, and commentator on the sport of distance running since 1999 • Adviser and confidant of other perambulators • Paradoxical hater of exercise fanatics • Chihuahua whisperer • Sentence-fragment impresario

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

1988 NHIAA Indoor State Championship (video)

My friend and high-school classmate Troy Patoine and his wife Teressa (who live in Concord and whose home I invade every April as a waypoint en route to the Boston Marathon) have conspired to convert some 30-year-old videos of our cross-country and track meets from VHS to digital format.

This is the New Hampshire High School Indoor Track and Field Championship meet from Jan. 30, 1988, held at Leverone Field House, Dartmouth College's facility, in Hanover. The first ten minutes are actually from the last league meet of the season on January 16. On the 24th, with nothing on the scholastic schedule, I ran a hilly 5-mile road race in Penacook (a few miles from my house) on a very cold and icy day. I had my coach's blessing and he knew his stuff, but it was probably a bad idea because I went out too hard and ended up with a 27:45 or so. That left me a little draggy at States, I think, but then again I was barely 18 and recovered from almost anything in about 10 minutes, including most sexual activity. Just seeing if you're awake.

This was my senior year. In different times of year, I had already managed a second at one state meet and a third at a Meet of Champions in my tiny state, but had never won anything. I'm in the 3,000 meters -- the first indoor event in the track then and today -- in this video. I went in seeded third, but not far ahead of three or four others. If you advance the video to the 12:00 mark, just before the race starts, you can see the balding and bespectacled countenance of CHS principal Chuck Foley, who died just last year at 91 -- I didn't even know he was there watching until today. Matt Fitzgerald, who went to high school about 35 miles from where I did and was inspired by this race to later write 65 books about running and fitness, also ran the 3,000; he's the tall one in the white T-shirt on the outside at the start.

26:00 into the video is the 1,000 meters, in which a state record was set by my junior teammate Christopher Basha. Chris's strategy was fairly clear from the start here. This was a slow 220-yard track then and has been upgraded (shortened) to a slow 200-meter track since, and I think his first lap was right around 27 even.

The producer of these videos was the late Ron Patoine, Troy's dad. Troy, Chris and I ran the 1500 meters at this meet. I will post the associated video along with various others from the previous fall and subsequent spring in the weeks to come.